The Art of Innoculation
This is reminiscent of how Dan Rather's doctored documents innoculated Bush against the all-too-real charges of non-performance of his National Guard duties.
Rove knew what was coming from the FitzGerald investigation. His over-the-top rant in New York 2 weeks ago was simply to generate enough noise that the specific meaning of the Cooper message largely gets lost.
What the general public hears, filtered through the media, is that Rove is an intensely partisan figure who really gets the Democrats pissed off. Oh, and by the way, a few weeks later and they're still ticked off at him.
They're trying like hell to transform this into a partisan political issue.
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I think you are definately on to something. He's guaranteed himself speaking fees and a future no matter if he's convicted or whatever. Look at Oliver North and the Watergate folks.
Republicans love law breakers, I wrote a piece on my blog called "Right Wingers and Gangsta Rappers, separated at birth?" that talks about how many right wingers seem to favor the criminal class.
July 13, 2005 11:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
"What the general public hears, filtered through the media, is that Rove is an intensely partisan figure who really gets the Democrats pissed off. Oh, and by the way, a few weeks later and they're still ticked off at him."
I think you're entirely correct that Rove's outburst was connected to his knowing that he was about to hit a patch of scandal.
But I think you're only half-right about the specific motivation.
The Moose had some thoughts about this a couple of days ago. He wrote:
"We now know why Rove launched the attack on "liberals" a couple of weeks ago. Feeling the heat of the grand jury, Rove was likely cementing his relationship with the conservative base of the Republican party."
I think that gets a bit closer to the heart of the matter.
July 14, 2005 12:27 AM | Reply | Permalink